Hey peaps!

Can you tell me more on what platform would be better to use when playing third-person MMORPG, considering this will be our first game? We consider Social, PC and iOS/Android/Windows Phone.

Answers would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

MMORPGs are the hardest type of game to create. Do you really mean you guys are targeting 100,000 active subscribers? That's what the 'Massive' part of Massively Multiplayer Online RPG means: A minimum of 100k active subscribers. It's not a hard and fast definition, but that's the water line general measurement.

RPGs are a difficult genre to make.

Networked games are difficult to make

Persistent-world networked games are difficult to make.

Persistent world networked online RPGs with 100,000 active subscribers requires hundreds of skilled developers with hundreds of millions of dollars, normally.

Are you sure you didn't mean you want to make a non-massive Online RPG ? Those are sometimes called an ORPG, MOG (Multiplayer Online Game), or a Multiplayer or Networked RPG, but the media and consumers (game players) tend to just categorize it all under the "MMO" banner, but developers have to be a bit more specific in their wording when communicating with each other or confusion can result.

If this is your first game, making anything other than text-based games or simple 2D games is a bad idea. But I totally get the excitement and the enjoyability of attempting to make something cool and large-scale; just don't invest your retirement fund in it.

If this is your first game, PCs are by far the easiest to develop for. Target that. And there is zero harm in aiming small for your first game - consider it a stepping stone to your next larger game. Call it a 'tech demo' or a 'prototype' or whatever you want to.

As for what platform is best suited for third-person games, that entirely entirely entirely depends on the nature of the gameplay of the game you have in mind. Third Person MMORPG still is to vague or generic to give any real definition to your game.

I will say this though: There have been many fantastic third-person games on game consoles, and there have been many fantastic MMOs for PCs.

Also, I'm not trying to discourage you from game development and from programming in general. You absolutely should learn it and pursue the career that interests you!

I'm just trying to discourage you from trying to making a MMORPG for your first game, seeing that it takes more professional companies, filled with experienced and skilled developers with decades of years each under their belts, hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of dollars ($400 million for World of Warcraft, not including all the expansions and such).

In the same way, I wouldn't discourage someone from their dream of being a professional wrestler. I'd just discourage him from getting in a bar fight with a group of US Marines for his first fight.

If you're hobbyists, and you're making a smaller scale online RPG, I gave some advice here (lower down the post), but I'm by no means an expert.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Maybe by 'first game' you merely meant this was your first game as a team, but that you are all already experienced?

Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant by MMORPG. I tend to do that alot.

Perhaps you could clarify a bit more? I'm probably jumping the gun and assuming too much.

We just want to make small third-person RPG, online. Of course, we didn't mean making it massive or resourceful. I thought of making it social, cause t-p RPG would be a unique thing for social platform. I just think fb platform won't be able to support even a small t-p RPG. What do you think?

The best platform, from the point of view of actually finishing the game, is the platform you already have experience with.

For example, if you know how to build web apps, but not how to build C++ apps for PC, or mobile apps, then you should go for the Facebook platform, because it adds the fewest new unknowns.

The best platform, from the point of view of eventual success, is the platform that best matches your game play style. For example, if your game has small, 3-minute, snackable experiences, and doesn't require FPS-style immediate feedback, then the mobile usage pattern would suit it very well.

If you're wondering how many people you'll need to make a third-person online strategy game for Facebook, then I don't have experience with Facebook as a platform - my development thus far is purely PC.

The general answer would depend on the size of the game - how much content the game has, how long it takes each artist to make a piece of content, and how many years you want to work on it. When you actually get into development though, there are all kinds of hidden challenges that show up.

You'll need people to:

...write the logic of the game in computer code

...sketch and maybe color concept art

...make the 3D models from that concept art

...rig the 3D models for animation

...create textures for the 3D models

...compose music

...make sound effect

...draw concepts of the game world

...craft the game world in your editor

And probably more things I haven't thought of.

Now, some people can do multiple of those tasks, but if you have alot of content that needs to be made, you'll need multiple people working in some of those categories. For example, maybe your composer can compose the music and do the sound effects (if he's skilled in both areas)... but if you need alot of music, he won't have time to do both.

Maybe your 3D modeller is skilled enough to sketch the concepts, shape the 3D model, rig the model, and create textures for it. But maybe your world is so large that you need half a dozen map makers.

It really depends on the nature and scale of the game you want to make. Some games are plot-heavy with only a little art and content, some games are art-heavy or content-heavy with little plot; some games have huge worlds, some games have compact worlds.

Most open-world games, and especially online ones, fall into the "lots of content and art" with "huge worlds" category.

If this is your first game, you shouldn't start out trying to paint the Mona Lisa. The best way to paint the Mona Lisa is to first learn how to straight lines with a pencil on a piece of paper. Eventually you'll become skilled enough to paint masterpieces, but trying to paint amazing artwork - even smaller amazing artworks - without first learning the intermediate steps, often leads to discouragement and disappointment. Just ask my stick-figure art.

There's a reason why armies train their soldiers before dropping them on a battlefield - they won't learn on the battlefield, they'll just die there. They need to learn before they encounter the enemy, and then their training gets refined and grows on the battlefield; they have to have the solid foundation of training beforehand.

Videogames are easy to play, but they are very complex beasts to make. So, game developers really do start very very small with very simple games and then work their way upwards one completed game at a time - each game getting slightly larger and slightly more complex than the previous one.

Again, I'm working off of the assumption that this is your first game, and the first game of your friends. If this is not your first game, and you've already taken the steps of making smaller games, and are now actually trained and ready to make a larger game, awesome!

It's just... we see a continual stream of people who find a sword on the ground and decide to run off and kill the dragon. We try to shout, "Learn to use the sword first! Train to become a warrior! Fight straw dummies before attacking a dragon!", but they ignore us and get eaten. The end.

Not that I've slain the dragon myself - I've merely survived by not slaying the dragon, instead practicing on chickens. And even then, I sometimes bite off more than I can chew.